From my early days as a believer, I've found great help in reading the puritans. Much of who I am theologically and devotionally has been formed by their influence--I never fail to profit from reading them. For example, the following remarks by Thomas Brooks puts me right in the centre of who I am:
If the Lord Jesus Christ is a believer’s life, then this serves to emphasize that all believers should highly prize the Lord Jesus.
Oh, it is this Christ that is your life; it is not your husband, it is not your child, it not this or that thing; neither is it this ordinance or that, that is a believer’s life. No; it is the Lord Jesus Christ who is the author, who is the matter, who is the exerciser, who is the strengthener, who is the completer, of a believer’s life.
You prize great people; the Lord Jesus Christ is great—he is King of kings, and Lord of lords.
You prize others for their wisdom and knowledge: the Lord Jesus has in himself all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, Col. 2:3.
You prize others for their beauty: the Lord Jesus Christ is the most beautiful of ten thousand, Song of Solomon 5:10.
You prize others for their usefulness: the Lord Jesus Christ is the right hand of a believer, without which he can do nothing.
The believer may say of Christ as the philosopher said of the heavens, Tolle coelum, nullus ero—Take away the heavens, and I shall be nobody; so take away Jesus Christ, and a believer is nobody—nobody to perform any action, nobody to bear any affliction, nobody to conquer corruption, nobody to withstand temptation, nobody to improve mercies, nor nobody to joy in others’ grace.
Oh, prize Jesus Christ!
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